13th January 2025

A ceremonial occasion in Bishy Road

Dave Teal from Barwick-in-Elmet Historical Society recently sent us a fascinating old photo which we hadn't seen before. It shows some dignitaries in a carriage, driving past the old Co-operative shop on the corner of Bishopthorpe Road and Nunnery Lane. He estimates the date to be around 1900, for some civic occasion. It's a lovely picture with lots of interesting detail, showing various bystanders, a shopkeeper at his door, and small children waiting on the wall. (It was from an old album alongside a photo of a large scale military procession in Clifford St, possibly the same occasion).

This corner housed an impressive York Equitable Industrial Society (YEIS) building at the end of the 19th century. The origins of the Co-operative movement in York go back to 1859, when the York Equitable Industrial Society was established. The first of their shops in this area, Branch No 6, was a grocery which opened in Clement Street in 1895. The following year the grocery moved to no 92 here, retaining a butchery at Clement Street.

This photograph shows the building in its setting, opposite Darnborough St around the turn of the century.

At this time the employee hours were reduced by two and a half hours a week, with closing hours now Mondays and Tuesdays 6pm, Wednesdays 12 noon, Thursdays 7pm, Fridays 8.30pm and Saturdays 9pm (market day). Later in 1914 the Directors of the YEIS agreed a 48 hour working week for all employees, with 'Full Trades Union conditions of Labour'. They also agreed to keep jobs open for those men who served with the forces, and to pay married men a supplement, to make their wages up from military pay.

A later image shows it with the upper front bay windows removed.

YEIS also had a large bacon factory, bakery and coal depot alongside the river at Clementhorpe throughout the first half of the 20th century (more details in our book Made in Clementhorpe).

In 1901 improvements had been made to warehouse accommodation at Nunnery Lane, and then in the 1920s butchery was sited at no 88 and drapery at 92. By 1936 the drapery had became Yorkshire Co-operative Laundries, but after the war only the butchery remained. In the 1960s nos. 88, 90 and 92 became Hilton’s house furnishers. Another grocery branch of the YEIS had opened locally in 1928, on the corner of Scarcroft Road, and this remained a Co-op until the late 1980s.

Plans for a new Inner Ring Road around the 1960s led to the demolition of shop buildings on this side of Bishopgate St. including the old Co-op building. The last shop on Nunnery Lane is now the barber at no 84, Snip.